Archive for September, 2007
Tip: Softbox or shoot-through umbrella = ringlight
Sun Sep 30th - 6:21pm
I think we can all agree that there are more than enough self-portraits of me on this here Interweb thing. But here's another one!
This time it's to demonstrate how you can use a softbox or shoot-through umbrella to get roughly the same effect as an expensive ringlight. The stressed-out pose with my hand up was done to illustrate how soft the shadows are. Notice that my wrist is right in front of my eye but my eye is still well lit.
Click through to the lighting diagram for a summary of how to set everything up.
This technique is still used by even the most high-end magazine photographers. Look for the tell-tale catchlights in the subject's eyes which will appear as circles or squares with a line going from the middle downwards.
ps: This portrait appears on the front page of Strobist today. Eek! There's nothing like waking up on a Sunday afternoon and seeing your own ugly mug staring back at you from your favourite web site…
Jeffrey Sauger found guilty of criminal trespass
Sat Sep 29th - 9:58pm
The 3-day trial of photojournalists Jeffrey Sauger and Jim West (previously mentioned here) has concluded with Sauger being found guilty of criminal trespass and West being found not-guilty of failure to disperse while covering a Nazi rally in Toledo, Ohio in December 2005.
The NPPA has a report on the verdicts and Jeffrey Sauger himself has posted his own account in this thread on the Sports Shooter message board. (You'll need to scroll down a fair bit, it's about the 40th comment.)
Black background and silhouette lighting tutorials
Sat Sep 29th - 5:17am
I've posted a couple of new illustrated lighting tutorials over on Flickr explaining the two basic techniques used for yesterday's photos of a violinist.
- How to use any wall as a black background
Get to grips with this technique and you'll have a good foundation for many other styles of lighting, especially ones involving ratios. - Silhouette lighting
This one isn't as important as you'll only ever use this technique for creating silhouettes but if you need to do it then this is how.
Why bank charges are evil
Sat Sep 29th - 1:14am
Like many people who have, in a moment of insanity, decided to start their own business, I've had to put up with occasional bank charges.
You know how it goes: A debit card transaction doesn't show up on your online banking and you forget you made it, then you buy something else that takes you close to your overdraft limit, then the first transaction pops up and BANG you're overdrawn — £30 charge! Perfectly fair and reasonable stuff like that. Yeah right. That's why people hate bank charges so much.
Well check this out for a nice bit of customer service from my helpful friends at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Two weeks ago they asked me to come in to see about "upgrading" my personal account to a fee-paying business account. I told them that I'd try to make it as a courtesy, but I didn't really want my personal account upgraded so if a job came up then that would take priority over the meeting. That's exactly what happened and I couldn't make the meeting.
Now, somewhere along the line someone had given someone some wrong information. It turns out that the meeting wasn't logged down as being about an account upgrade. It was down as being a review of my overdraft. And when I didn't attend the meeting someone took this to mean that I didn't want the overdraft anymore so they helpfully removed it.
On a Saturday morning.
When the bank is closed.
So aside from the frustration of standing at a cash machine on Saturday afternoon, needing money for a taxi but instead staring in disbelief at a message telling me I'm overdrawn, I knew that I'd have to stay overdrawn all weekend until I could contact the bank on Monday to find out why.
And it was on Monday morning that they told me about the overdraft being removed. You'd think they might have called me in advance or sent a letter but no, apparently good manners don't apply to banks.
But hey! No charges for being overdrawn! Or so they assured me. And then they put the overdraft straight back on the account. All sorted.
Except over the next couple of days these two letters dropped through the door. It turns out that the promise of no charges was ever-so-slightly wrong. Just have a look at these figures! There's a £30 charge for being overdrawn (a "paid referral charge") and £28 for the ever-vague "maintenance charge".
Let me explain why I'm mentioning this here:
The job I did at the school concert yesterday involved getting two photos for two papers. I was able to get one in the middle of the afternoon and then I had to look for one during the concert or, as it turned out, set something up afterwards. I left the house at 1:40pm and got home at about 11:30pm. The total payment for both photos will be £55. It's okay money for doing a job you enjoy, and I do this job because I want to, but it's also working for a living.
Now my bank wants £58 for doing precisely nothing, apart from causing me some extra worry and inconvenience.
If you've never had to deal with bank charges then you may not fully appreciate why people are so outraged by them. But next time a newspaper or TV show does a feature on someone who has quite possibly been left in financial ruin by a bank simply deciding to take money away from them, remember this as another example of why people hate bank charges so much.
On this occasion a complaint has succeeded in getting the £28 charge cancelled but the £30 charge is still up in the air. This, I understand, is the latest tactic that banks are using: They hit you with two charges for the same offence, then cancel the lower charge as a "good will gesture". That way they can grab just as much money as always but they can claim that they're trying to help you.
Gizzen Briggs primary schools concert
Fri Sep 28th - 11:27pm
Yesterday presented a new challenge — how do you do a photo when the people who are meant to be in the photo aren't there?
I was meant to be doing a photo for a story in the Press & Journal about a concert featuring the Tain Royal Academy band Gizzen Briggs and lots of kids from primary schools around the region. The concert started at 7:30pm but the paper's deadline was 6pm so we arranged to set-up a photo with some of the primary school kids at the rehearsal in the afternoon. Only problem was that the primary school kids never actually came to the rehearsal.
We considered going to the local primary school to do the photo but on the way out of the door, complete with two Gizzen Briggers and a selection of violins to use as props, we realised that it was after 3pm so all the kids would have gone home.
Calling the paper with some no-can-do excuse wasn't an option so I decided to do the best I could, which was to look for photos that would be strong enough to stand on their own merit, even if they weren't exactly what we wanted, ie: none of the younger kids. I took photos during the rehearsal, then went through to another room with one of the violinists to do some posed shots with dramatic lighting.
I'd read about this technique the other day, called "skunk" lighting, so I thought I'd give that a go. I had no idea if it would work or not, but a few test shots looked promising so I stuck with it. By this point I was really just interested in getting a strong, eye-catching image that would jump off the page.
And to cut a long story short, or at least not so long, half an hour before deadline the paper had four rehearsal shots and four posed shots to choose from. Here's my favourite of the posed ones.
As is often the case the paper didn't use my first choice, but on this occasion I do really like the one they used. I haven't seen the paper myself so I don't know how they cropped it but this is the original frame:
Here are the other posed photos that I sent in:
And these are the other candid shots of the rehearsal:
One other idea I quickly tried was a silhouette. I've been told that the P&J editor isn't a fan of silhouettes but I thought it was worth spending a couple of minutes to see if I could get something really impressive. At the time I didn't like any of the results so I didn't bother sending them in, but now I do like this one frame:
NHS trust admits faking MP visit photo
Fri Sep 28th - 6:08pm
There's one tantalising detail missing from this BBC report about Tameside General Hospital faking a photo of a visit by culture secretary James Purnell: Who was the photographer? The picture has a distinct newspaper style to it so I'd be very interested to know if the person who took the two photos (knowing they'd be composited) is a newspaper photographer.
This would raise an intriguing ethical dilemma. As a photojournalist he (or she) wouldn't be allowed to fake the photo. But in theory there's no reason why he can't do private commercial work which does involve faking a photo. The dilemma is: If the hospital hired the photographer on a private basis, but he knew the photo would be sent to newspapers, which ethical constraint is he bound by?
I've actually called the hospital to find out who took the photo but the main phone number just rings and rings, and the number for the media contact goes to voice mail so I've left a message. If I find out any more then I'll let you know.
Flash modifier comparison
Thu Sep 27th - 3:05am
Thanks to Nunya Biznas for this link to a comparison of flash modifiers showing the effects of many different diffusers, ranging from bounce flash to umbrellas, Lumiquest softboxes and the Gary Fong Lightsphere.
The page was last updated in January 2006 so two noticeable exceptions are the Demb Diffuser and the new Gary Fong diffuser, the Whaletail, but it's a good resource all the same. (Sorry Gary but does anyone else think the Whaletail looks a bit like a toilet?)
Personally I've used the Stofen Omnibounce (good) and the Lightsphere (excellent) but nowadays I'm back to either direct or bounced flash. I've found that the most important qualities in a light source are direction and power, so if you've got enough light coming from the right angle then diffusion doesn't make a great deal of difference, at least not for the sort of photos that I do.
Inver science demo pic in Press & Journal
Wed Sep 26th - 4:36pm
Got another pic in the Press & Journal today and this gives me another opportunity to mention my #1 tip: Always supply a couple of options. It doesn't matter how much you like a photo, if the paper doesn't like it then it isn't going in. But what about one of those other pics that you don't like but the paper might?
Here's my favourite pic from a school science demonstration yesterday:
What I like about that photo is that you don't immediately know what you're seeing. Which part is reflection and which isn't? But I also sent another version from further back and this is the one that the paper used:
Truth be told I don't much care for that second pic, I think the tighter one is miles better. But it's the second pic that's going to pay for my next driving lesson.
So, fellow freelancers everywhere: Next time you've got that awesome pic that you really want to see in print, make sure you also send some of the not-so-awesome pics because it might be one of those that helps to pay the bills.
(And a curious note of trivia: Out of the four pics that I've had in the P&J recently, two have been based around a reflection, the first one being the spectators reflected in the tuba at the Invergordon Fleet Day.)
India: A Kite’s Eye View
Mon Sep 24th - 4:34am
The BBC has a gallery of photos from India: A Kite's Eye View, Nicolas Chorier's book of aerial photographs taken using a camera attached to a kite. Some info:
Chorier uses a Canon 5D camera, and the whole rig on the kite weighs about 2kg, depending on the lens and extra battery. The cradle with the camera operates by remote control and can achieve a 360-degree rotation and 90-degree tilt. An air-to-ground video link provides real-time monitoring on a portable TV for accurate framing.
And in case picture #4 reminds you of another aerial photo, here's a link to a page about Illusions of Arabia, the famous image by George Steinmetz.
Football from another angle + dramatic team shot
Sat Sep 22nd - 9:30pm
I've mentioned before about shooting football from a low angle but what if you're working with ugly backgrounds? That low angle will only exaggerate them. What you can do instead is get up high and shoot the action from above to use the grass as a background.
The worst football pitch around here for backgrounds is Invergordon. Shoot from one side/end of the pitch and you've got a background of houses, industrial buildings or fairground vehicles that seem to be permanently there. Shoot from the other side/end and you're shooting into the sun. But the Ross Sutherland rugby club pitch is right next door, complete with a large pavilion, and conveniently the pavilion has a flight of steps leading up to the second floor:
Okay so it isn't much but it's better than nothing. The papers don't pay enough to hire a cherry picker for the afternoon. Here's a view of the pitch from the top of the steps. You can see that you really want to be a lot higher than this but any height advantage is better than being at ground level.
Here's an example shot taken from the top of the steps:
Another new thing that I tried today was putting a bit of drama into a team photo. I'm second-guessing the papers here because they keep running the same formulaic team photos every year and I think the time is right to push things a little. I didn't get too adventurous with this one but it certainly has more impact than the usual line-up photos. Also my first time using a voice-activated light stand and thanks to the kind volunteer who did a perfect job.
